Template:Did you know nominations/Warlander

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Warlander

(edit nomination page)

• ... that although the Warlander, a baroque war horse, has been bred since at least the 16th Century, it remained unnamed until the end of the 20th Century?

Created by WarlanderHorse (talk). Self nom at 21:08, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

• Article length and date of creation are fine. The prose style is acceptable. The citation format wasn't great, but the nominator/creator here is a first-time Wikipedia editor -- precisely the type of person we should try to encourage through DYK. Accordingly, I went through the article and enhanced the citation formatting. I have some questions about whether the sources utilized are reliable sources. For example, at least one of the sources is the web site of a Warlander breeder in Australia. I've asked an experienced editor on equine matters to chime in on the reliable sourcing issue. If others have equine background, please feel free to chime in. I've also asked the members of the equine project to opine on reliability of sourcing here. Also, some of the sources are in German, and input on copyvio/close paraphrasing would be welcome from a German speaker. Other elements of this review remain pending. Cbl62 (talk) 00:20, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

ALT1:'

• ... that the modern Warlander, a new Baroque horse breed derived from the Andalusian and Friesian breeds, was inspired by a historic war horse cross that was bred since at least the 16th Century?

• I've proposed a more historically accurate ALT version. The issue of "what is a breed" is a very hot and heavy issue at WPEQ because there is no universal group (like the AKC for dogs) that deigns to grant "breed" status on new crossbreds. Also, a lot of breeds (nearly all of them, actually) LOVE to claim roots a touch more ancient than they actually are, with only loose circumstantial evidence for many claims. Here, the Warlander has only been called such since maybe the 1990s, and cannot itself be traced back to the 16th century, though there the old breeds (the Friesians and Andalusians) do both have studbook sources going back that far, (in the case of the Andalusian, to the 1300s, in fact) and it is certainly quite possible the two were crossed back then. But it's a stretch of PR to say that the modern horse is the same as the crossbred of antiquity. We have put tremendous research into this question at Horses in warfare and Horses in the Middle Ages. For the article, I'll review sources and tag accordingly. The #1 problem we at WPEQ have with all the breeds articles is that the most reliable source on the history and characteristics of a breed -- the breed registry -- is also often the chief PR organization promoting the breed as well, so their claims -- especially those of great antiquity -- have to be examined with a grain of salt against completely neutral third party sources. Here, the claim that the modern Warlander IS a historic "war horse" is actually a very dubious claim, particularly as the knight itself was sort of a fading thing by the 16th century as was the Destrier type war horse, and the lighter warmblood style cavalry horse was actually on the rise. Sorry to write a treatise here. I support the new article going to DYK, but we need to tone down the claims a bit. Montanabw^(talk) 20:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

An editor has added several "dubious" and "citation needed" tags to the article. These issues need to be resolved before this can be considered for promotion. Cbl62 (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I've asked Montanabw if he could work with the original editor to try to resolve the issues with the tags. Suggesting giving it a couple days to see if this can be rescued and still be featured on DYK. Cbl62 (talk) 22:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Review my cleanup. I'm Ok with what's in there now, and if my ALT hook is OK, I have no further objections. Up to y'all now. Montanabw^(talk) 17:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Length, sourcing, hook interest, creation date all check out now. Thanks to Montanabw for his efforts in cleaning this up. And congrats to WarlanderHorse for his/her first DYK, hopefully there will be many more. Cbl62 (talk) 05:10, 25 August 2011 (UTC)